eatinginseason

Meatless Monday - Friday, Week 1

2011-06-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

It was an article in The New Yorker, specifically on test tube meat, that prompted Dan to suggest we try eating meatless Monday through Friday. Why not? We're trying to eat more healthfully and it sounded like an interesting challenge.

I think it was pretty successful, although we both accidentally ate meat. I completely forgot when I was out to eat. Dan said he did think about ordering something meatless, but the siren call of a special Italian sandwich was too strong. Oh well, it was just week 1, right?

So far, so good. Perhaps the most exciting part is trying new recipes. I made a beautiful rice, beet, celery and feta salad for dinner on Monday. Tuesday I was gone (Dan ordered veggie pizza). Wednesday we bad black bean and guacamole tacos. Thursday I made these fantastic red lentil patties with cilantro sauce from Myra Kornfield's book, The Healthy Hedonist. They were so delicious! I'm freezing the leftovers—I will report back on how those hold.

We decided that we would eat fish on Friday, then eat meat (or not...) on Saturday and Sunday. I like the idea of always have fish one night a week—since moving to Maine I definitely have not taken advantage of the ocean as much as I should. Today I got some beautiful haddock at the store—I'm planning on making some Thai red curry dish stew with chard and potatoes for dinner. Can't wait.

CSA Season is Back!

2011-06-10T06:01:00.000-07:00

We may have shot ourselves in the foot. Thinking we wouldn't be gardening this year, I signed us up for a CSA from Laughing Stock Farm in Freeport, Maine.

We have raised beds at the house we're renting but the owners mentioned some lead issues. Very minimal ones, but nonetheless they did the raised beds, which is what you're supposed to do with lead. But Dan is paranoid and long story short, I didn't think we'd be planting anything to eat, just flowers.

I decided to get the soil tested in the beds and wouldn't you know, no lead. And then Dan did some research and decided that he would eat the fruit of the plant, just not any leaves (ie tomatoes good, kale bad).

Also, I had put us on the waiting list for the community garden, not thinking we'd get in until next year at the earliest. Of course, we got a spot this year.

So now, we have 6 raised beds in our backyard, 3 beds at the community garden plus a CSA. Eeek!

I was much smarter about planting our community garden (read: I was in charge of seeding...) So there's not much there: 3 tomatoes, 1 tomatillo, 6 broccoli, 2 fennel, thyme, rosemary, chamomile, 2 boxes of broccoli rabe, red iceberg, wax beans, carrots and zucchini. At home, we're going to put in 3 peppers, 2 eggplant, 3 tomatoes, 1 tomatillo and tons of flowers. We also have strawberries and raspberries.

Our CSA is nice so far. The past 2 weeks have been the same: radishes, salad turnips, arugula, head lettuce, mesclun, chard and spinach. Nom leafy greens. Last week we also got some potatoes from Goranson Farm, which, ironically enough, I'm possibly writing a story about for EatingWell.

So what have we done with our bounty so far? Well really just salads. Which is terrific, of course. Salad season is the best...

What's Fresh Friday: Spent Grain Bread

2011-01-29T10:29:00.000-08:00

It takes me a little bit to motivate when it comes to brewing beer. I'm not sure why, it's incredibly easy. I guess it's the time commitment involved. We bought a bunch of brewing supplies in December and that sat, staring at me for weeks from the bench near the back door. I finally moved them downstairs so I wouldn't feel guilty, tucking them away in the root cellar where I was sure to forget about them for a few more weeks. Then Dan went down to Boston for the night last weekend and I decided it couldn't be put off anymore.

We had gotten ingredients to make a Fat Tire clone, though with a darker malt extract and a bit more hops. The original plan was to add some spices to it, but I just wanted to get it over with so I just brewed it.

Although I always compost the spent grain, I knew from my homebrewer friend, Kat, that you can cook with it. I started at the bag, wondering if I could motivate to do something with it. After a quick Google search, I found this recipe from beer100.com. I adapted it slightly—and will continue to tweak it—but I do have to say it's one of the best breads I've ever made. Lucky for me, I can continue to make it. Kat clued me into a secret: that you can freeze the spent grain for later use. So I'll be making it again very soon!

Spent Grain Bread
Adapted from Joe Thompson's recipe on beer100.com

1 cup warm water
4 Tbsp sugar
1 pkg dry bakers yeast

2 cups spent grain
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp salt
4 cups bread flour

Whisk together water, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Let stand until the yeast begins to bubble, about 5 minutes. Stir in salt, oil, spent grain and 1 cup flour.

Mix well. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to make a stiff dough.

Knead well, cover, and let rise until doubled. Punch down the dough and shape into a round loaf. Place on a greased baking sheet, cover, and let rise until doubled.

Preheat oven to 425 with a pizza stone on the lowest rack for 30 minutes.

The dough will have spread out a little on your baking sheet. Pull the ends under to form a tighter round loaf, make 3 slashes across the top with a serrated knife and transfer to the stone. Bake until an instant read-thermometer inserted in the middle reads 204-206 F, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

The crust was great and the texture was good (even though I underbaked it a tad). I thought it was a tad sweet so I'll cut or eliminate the sugar next time.

Thai Red Curry Root Vegetable Soup

2011-01-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

I'm back. Not that I have any real followers who care ;) We moved to Maine in October and I haven't been very inspired to type here. But I'm going to change that.

I've struggled a bit with finding local foods here. There's no brick-and-mortar co-op in Portland proper. There's a Whole Foods, but at the moment they only have 4 or 5 local produce items. I'm unsure if that will change as it gets warmer. There is an old school buying club, but they only have a local produce order once a month. It's better than nothing though, and luckily the house we're renting has a root cellar for storage!

Last month was our first order. Here's what we got:

Yukon gold potatoes, rutabaga, yellow and red onions, celeriac, canola oil, frozen blueberries, goat cheese with kalamata olives, stew meat and ground beef.

Also once a month they partner with local business who don't necessarily sell to consumers. The first month we got whole-wheat and pumpkin-raisin bread, locally roasted coffee and mint chocolate cookie gelato. This month we're getting seaweed! Woo!

My plan is to try something called What's Fresh Fridays. My plan is to make something new and exciting on Friday and post about it here. It may be a recipe using something fresh and local, or it may be just a recipe using a new ingredient, or simply a recipe I haven't tried. I just want to keep my cooking fresh.

So this past Friday I made a spin on a soup I've made for years. The roots of the recipe are from culinary school. The chef that taught our PM Fine Dining class made it occasionally. It was a squash or carrot soup with Thai red curry flavors. I've made it over and over again at home. This time, I changed up what was in the soup a bit.

Thai Red Curry Root Vegetable Soup

2 rutabaga, peeled and diced

8 small carrots, peeled and thickly sliced

1 cup sliced celery

1 14-ounce can "lite" coconut milk

2 cups chicken broth

Water if needed

2-4 T Thai red curry paste

2-3 T lime juice

1-2 T brown sugar

Fish sauce or salt to taste

Sliced scallions and sriracha for garnish

Put rutabaga, carrots and celery in a Dutch oven. Add coconut milk and broth. If the liquid doesn't just cover the veggies, add some water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat so the soup is simmering. Cook until the veggies are very tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Turn off the heat then puree with an immersion blender (or puree in batches--carefully!--in a blender). Add curry paste, lime juice, brown sugar and fish sauce or salt to taste. Serve with scallions and sriracha.

Tomato sauce, salsa and pickled radish--oh my!

2010-09-26T06:52:00.000-07:00

I canned from 3-9 yesterday and have been at it since 8:30 am this morning. I managed to make 4 quarts of tomato sauce last night, a dozen half-pints of bruschetta topping, 6 pints of salsa and 3 pints of pickled radish--which, wow, is so good! I need to take stock in all I've canned so far this year—I have a stack of jar boxes up to my waist!

I'm getting a little obsessive about this though. My free time has been spent thumbing through canning books, I've bought more vinegar than a normal person should in a week and I should really buy stock in Ball, since I've acquired dozens and dozens of new jars this year. So glad Hilary leant me her jar grabber—that's the key to a pleasant canning experience! Lid grabber, doesn't work so well. Fail.

I'm done for the weekend but definitely not done for good this season. My tomato plants, though riddled with blight, are still producing like mad. There will be more salsa and sauce to come!

Getting Ready for Monster Canning Session #1

2010-09-24T05:27:00.000-07:00

After a little searching around last night, I realized my tomato-canning-options are much greater than I initially thought. So I leafed through my canning books last night and made a monster shoppng list so I coud be a litte more creative with what I do with my tomatoes this weekend. I'm going to make bruschetta topping, marinara sauce and tomato-ginger chutney. Also getting supplies for when I have time to play with apples—going to make apple chutney, apple butter and apple sauce. Yay! It's at the point where it's getting fun :)

Under Pressure

2010-09-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

I used my pressure canner for the first time last week! A gift from my cousin Joe and his wife Caitlin for our wedding, it's sat in the box since we received it. I finally got up the nerve to use it.

I think it was helpful that I tested the pressure cooking story for EatingWell this year, so I was familiar with how it worked. And it was really the same thing--nothing to be scared of.

I finally killed my cucumber plants--I just couldn't take it anymore. Now I'm swimming in tomatoes. I've made 2 batches of tomato sauce—marinara and fennel-herb—and made my first batch of salsa last night. The dehydrator has been whirring away practically non-stop since I pulled it out—I have quarts of dried peaches, tomatoes and zucchini tucked away in the pantry. Zucchini and peach chips are so tasty!

I'm sad that we will only have this garden for a year. We did manage to find a house to rent in Portland that has a root cellar and raised beds, along with berry bushes. Not sure how we lucked out there but wow! Now I need to get a root cellaring book to see how to store our bounty properly—glad I can put our delicata and potatoes down there, maybe the celery as well. They even cured pancetta and prosciutto down there so perhaps I'll dabble in that too!

... and it's still too hot to cook...

2010-08-31T16:37:00.000-07:00

My tomatoes are in! I've been desperately waiting for weeks for this and I'm already feeling overwhelmed. I found the most insane tomato today in my garden--like 4 morphed into one. I know, I should've taken a picture. Anyway, I presently have a batch of tomato sauce on the stoe een though it's way way too hot to cook, plus 3 trays of tomatoes in the dehydrater. I love my dehydrater. I dehydrated a lot of stuff 2 summers ago and I loved having that stuff in my cupboard. I'm going to do more of that this year!

Tonight's too hot to cook dinner = What's in the Garden + Fridge Panzanella

ingredients
1 cucumber, seeded and diced
1 wicked large tomato, diced
1 talespoon capers
1 large leaf red veined sorrel, torn
1 small garlic clove, minced
some kosher salt
olie oil and red wine vinegar to taste
2 stale pieces of whole-wheat bread, toasted and torn into cubes

Note: yes, i know, it's not traditional to toast bread for panzanella, but i just love how that toasty goodness absorbs the dressingy goodness.

Comine cucumber, tomato, capers and sorrel in a medium bowl. Mash garlic and salt with the back of a spoon on a cutting board. Add to the eggies. Stir in oil and vinegar to taste. Add bread and let stand until some of the dressing is absorbed.

Serving suggestion: vinho verde

It's too hot to cook...

2010-08-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

...ut I did anyway.

Since Dan's been in Maine (mid June) I haven't been cooking much. Aside from making pickles of course. We were on vacation in MI last week and it felt good to eat real (ut too much) food again. So I made a promise to myself that I was going to start cooking again this week.

I also need to start cleaning out the freezer since the tomatoes are starting to come in and I need some more space.

Tonight's dinner: Asian Wheat berry Salad with Mahi inspired by a recipe by Judith Finlayson.

ingredients
2 cups cooked wheat berries
1 large cucumer, peeled and finely diced
1 medium carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 large radish (like really large, turnip size), peeled and finely diced
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup thinly sliced snap and/or snow peas
Teriyaki dressing
Chile-garlic sauce
2 6-ounce pieces mahi
Chinese five spice powder
Kosher salt
1 medium head radicchio, thinly sliced

Comine wheat berries, cucumer, carrot, radish, cilantro and peas in a large bowl. Toss with teriyaki dressing and chile-garlic sauce to taste. Heat a bit of oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle mahi with five spice powder and salt. Cook mahi until just cooked through. Let stand on a clean cutting board for 5 minutes. Flake. Place radicchio in a sering bowl. Top with the wheat berry mixture and the mahi. Drizzle with more teriyaki sauce if desired.

I was missing a few ingredients or else I would've made dressing from scratch. but the teriyaki dressing was an easy addition. Would be delicious with chicken or steak instead of the fish, or some shrimp.

In a Pickle

2010-08-03T18:28:00.001-07:00

I really didn't think I was going overboard by planting 4 cucumber plants but apparently I did. I've now made 3 batches of pickles: bread and butter, spicy garlic dill and Mexican-inspired with cumin, coriander, garlic and crushed red pepper.

Too bad Dan doesn't love pickles. But I'm hoping to change his mind.

Cucumbers!

2010-07-11T06:30:00.001-07:00

I harvested my first cucumbers yesterday! See? Also harvested some radishes (yep, those are radishes, not turnips!) and snow and snap peas. Along with a mad amount of greens (salad and dark leafy) of course.

I was at first annoyed with Dan for planting as many peas as he did salad greens (OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration) but I've only been harvesting a handful a day—just enough for my once or twice daily salad habit.

New favorite salad dressing: Miso-Ginger. I shook up in a jar: red miso, soy sauce, sesame oil, sunflower oil and ground ginger. It's amazingly good.

Things are looking good in the Garden these days. I finally (oops) got some more tomato cages to put around the last remaining ones. The potatoes are going crazy. The kale I thinned looks beautiful. Carrots and beets are on their way. Beans are starting to flower. The cucumber crop should be banging—guess I'll be pickling this year! Even the eggplants look great, and I've never had much success planting those. Oh and the melons I planted? I started a few seeds and then left them to languish in a cottage cheese container for much too long. But guess what? Bouncing back!

Tonight I need to find a use for all of the (mature) watercress I pulled up the past few days. Maybe a cold creamy soup?

Drowning in salad

2010-06-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong. I love my husband. Dearly. To pieces. But let's just say sometimes (OK, most of the time) he goes a little too far with projects.

Take our garden for instance. Sure it may be a tad more than we really need, but it's doable. And I don't mind spending some time on the weekend preserving things.

If what's been planted is preservable.

And that leads me to today's rant. Salad greens.

A friend gave us a dozen or so beautiful starts of lettuce which we planted. And then, since our garden was ready for seed before we could plant anything of substance, we planted lots of salad greens.

Lots of salad greens.

We had the transplants. Then we planted rows of them, criss-crossing our 10-foot long long, 4-foot wide beds. And we planted them in between things that would grow tall, shading our salad greens from the hot sun that we knew was coming. It would be great, Dan told me.

That was 6 weeks or so ago. This week is when things got crazy. Salad greens were everywhere.

Now I should add that we did also plant DLGs: beets, 3 varieties of kale, 2 of chard, mustard, bok choy, yukina savoy. Unfortunately got to a lot of it first.

Back to SaladGate. So over the week I harvested 3 beautiful heads of greens from the starts Tobi gave us. Yesterday I began thinning. I cleaned over a pound of mixed greens plus some dark leafy ones. Today I harvested mostof the rest of the headed lettuce--8 heads--plus thinned at least 1 pound more salad plus some extra DLGs. I have 3 more heads that need to be harvested before they bolt. And a good amount that can stand to be thinned right now.

I honestly have so much I might sell bags of mesclun mix to folks at work tomorrow.

Anyone in VT need some salad greens? Here's the take from day 2's thinnings:

Last CSA Pick-Up

2010-06-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

It's strange to title this post Last CSA Pick-up. Most of the folks I know are getting their first pick-ups of the season, or have just had a few weeks. They're all really excited to get their CSAs. Bless their hearts. I'm so ready for it to end. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of a CSA. I really do. But even as someone who cooks almost every day, it exhausted me. We didn't get through the massive bag of mesclun they gave us 2 weeks ago and I wanted to cry as I composted the rotting remains. If I don't see another cabbage for a year, it won't be too soon. I again felt the frustration of the conflict between CSA members and better-paying customers when we received an email saying, sorry, no lettuce this week (or next!) because of the crazy hail storms, yet when I went to the co-op there were bags and bags of beautiful mesclun for sale.

I do have to say I'm really excited about this last pickup. We got beets with the greens still attached! Wild arugula, which I adore and can never seem to grow without fighting with flea beetles for the crop. And... another tomato? In June? In Vermont? That tastes like a tomato? Oh my...

2 lbs Nicola Potatoes
1 Bunch Chiogga Beets w/ Greens
1 Bunch Lacinato Kale
1 Bunch Scallions
1 Bunch Wild Arugula
1 Head of Napa Cabbage
1 Bag of Spinach
2 Head Lettuces
1 Large Tomato
Elmore Mountain Farmshare White Bread

Pa Pa Doodles Farm Eggs
Butternut Farm Maple Cream

Ack! I'm behind... and Pizza Night always makes us happy.

2010-04-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted in a while. Here's what we got the last 2 weeks:
Last Week
2 lbs Purple Adirondack Potatoes
2 lbs Chiogga Beets
2 lbs Rutabagas or Gilfeather Turnips
.5 lb Valentine Radishes
.25 lb Garlic
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Frozen Winter Squash Puree
Elmore Mountain Maple Oat Bread
1 Quart Sunflower Oil
Butterworks Yogurt

I totally missed the squash puree which made me sad: i finally nailed my Thai curried squash soup last time and wanted to make it again. Such is life.

This week:
2 lbs Mixed Baby Potatoes
2 lb Kohlrabi
2-3 lbs Green Cabbage
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
2 lbs Orange Carrots
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Pete's Applesauce
On the Rise Pizza Dough
Bonnieview Ewe's Feta
Quebec Grown Steel Cut Oats

Also had a meat pickup today:
Bonnieview Leg of Lamb
Pete's and Greenfield Highland Stew Beef
Pete's Spare Ribs

Looking very forward to the spare ribs!

Tonight's dinner: PIZZA! Took advantage of the fresh dough. Thinly sliced a mess of yellow and red onions, chopped kalamata olives, sliced Italian chicken sausage and cut up some frozen green bell peppers to put on it, as well as a lot of crumbled feta. Also had salad with shredded V-day radishes and a light vinaigrette. I've been really digging making vinaigrettes with the brine from my kalamatas. It's basically salty red wine vinegar. I shake it with a blend of evoo and grapeseed oil plus some grainy mustard. Nice and versatile.

On Monday night, I roasted a lot of root veggies and grilled the yak sausage from VT Yak Co from our previous meat pickup--3 out of 4 were fans of the yak sausage. It was lean and nicely spiced. Not at all gamy. I'd buy it again!

We've been busy many weekends lately so we haven't been the best about using things. I still have 2 (small) heads of savoy waiting to be turned into cabbage rolls. I have enough onions to make onion soup (maybe with the spare ribs? OH!) We haven't been able to finish the sprouts, but this week we're bound and determined to.

Mmm, Spicy Corn Chowder + Homemade Bread

2010-03-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm really into these frozen vegetables we're getting from the CSA. We got corn and potatoes this week so I made smoky corn chowder. Here's what I did.

Diced a bunch of pancetta and crisped it up in a pan. I took it out with a slotted spoon, then cooked onion and diced frozen green bell pepper. I added some chopped serranos I roasted and froze last summer, along with minced garlic and chipotle chili powder, then diced potatoes. I sprinkled the whole mess with flour then added skim milk. I let that simmer until the potatoes were tender, then added the frozen corn along with sliced scallions, lemon juice and chopped parsley. I made a salad of green leaf lettuce, cucumber and avocado dressed with blue cheese vinaigrette and served it with my favorite non-sweet quickbread, honey oat quick bread. It's so good, I made it all the time because I almost always have the stuff to make it on hand!

It's been a long time since we've had stir-fry night

2010-03-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

First, today's pickup:
3 lbs White Potatoes
2 lbs Celeriac
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
Frozen Hot Peppers
Frozen Sweet Corn
1 Quart Sauerkraut
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Bunch of Mizuna
5 lbs Aurora Farms Vermont Organic White Flour
1 lb Honey Gardens Apiaries Raw Apitherapy Honey
Ploughgate Willoughby Cheese
Champlain Orchards Red Delicious Apples

Whew, so we're making our way through the cabbage! Thankfully we didn't get any more this week! (Though we did get sauerkraut, but we'll just ignore that....)

So tonight's stir-fry was delicious. I sauteed yellow onion, kohlrabi, cabbage, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes from the freezer and garlic, then made a sauce of red miso, lemon juice and honey. I added the tofu from last week. I thickened it with a little bit of cornstarch. We put it over rice. I went a little overboard with the lemon (mom, are you reading?) but I tempered it with a bit of soy sauce. Good stuff.

Pork Roast + leftovers

2010-03-22T16:53:00.001-07:00

This weekend we had friends up from Massachussetts. I decided it was time to move on to phase 2 of Eat the Pig: time to break out the pork loin. We had a beautiful pork loin roast based on one of my favorite EatingWell recipes, tuscan pork loin. I forgot to get rosemary at the store, so I used dried instead, along with some dried basil. I skipped making the pan sauce at the end. To accompany it, I roasted a boatload of veggies from our CSA, including kohlrabi, turnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and onions. I brought home some stewed rhubarb that was leftover from a photo shoot along with some strawberries and whipped up a basic crumble topping for dessert. With ice cream of course.

So then tonight, we had enchiladas. I pulled the rest of the pork off the roast and mixed it with some of the frozen dlgs we've been getting from our CSA and some home-cooked pintos that were hanging out in the freezer. The red enchi sauce came from a can (gasp!) but oh well. I made a slaw with cabbage, daikon and red bell pepper, and I made a small batch of guac. I heart enchi night.

Dinner Tonight: Pretty Salad, Roasted Roots & Salmon Burgers

2010-03-18T15:51:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty darn excited about tonight's salad. To deal with the ridic amt of cabbage in my fridge, I thinly sliced 1/2 a head of red cabbage and added it to a handful of the shoot mix along with a shredded daikon and some dried cherries. That's going to be dressed with my tahini dressing.

I have roots roasting: yellow onion, parsnips, carrots and adirondack potatoes with some evoo and dried thyme.

Served with salmon burgers from Costco. For brain power. I know some folks dislike Costco greatly, but everyone I talk to there says it's a great place to work. I can get some sustainably caught fish there, along with some organic stuff. I pick and choose what I buy there, but their wild Alaskan salmon burgers are pretty nice to have in the freezer :)

Pizza Night + Last Night's Pickup

2010-03-18T05:41:00.000-07:00

Last night's pickup:
2 lbs Adirondack Potatoes
2 lbs Red Onions
1.5 lb Daikon Radish
2 lbs Orange Carrots
2 lbs Green Savoy Cabbage
Frozen Shredded Zucchini
Frozen Braising Greens
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Red Hen Turkey Red Pain Au Levain
Jasper Hill Landaff Cheese
Pa Pa Doodles Farm Eggs
Vermont Soy Maple Ginger Baked Tofu

I'm not gonna lie, I'm getting a tad overwhelmed with cabbage. We still have lots in our fridge and got more. Who's got ideas for cabbage for me?!?

Last night's dinner was delish. I had stashed our pizza dough from last week in the freezer for a rainy day. Yesterday was not rainy at all, but it was nice to have an easy dinner at our fingertips. I had a little leftover marinara. I defrosted our DLGs from the CSA and chopped them up (I had added them to the Mexi-soup last week without chopping them and they were mighty stringy--still had the tiny stems on and all that jazz). Then I thinly sliced a red onion, sliced the last roasted red pepper in the fridge and chopped some kalamata olives. Still had the fresh mozz from last week too.

Also made a salad with shoots, shredded carrot and daikon, dried MI cherries and that ginger-miso-tahini dressing. I'm totally digging on the combo of the cherries with that dressing right now. We'll have more tonight.

Fried Chickpeas with Andouille & Kale

2010-03-15T15:36:00.001-07:00

Tonight I'm making a riff on Mark Bittman's fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach.

Into the pan with the oil and chickpeas went some dried thyme and garlic powder. I'm subbing green kale for spinach and andouille for chorizo. I'm adding a chopped yellow onion, skipping the breadcrumbs and serving the whole mess over red quinoa.

It was delicious. I'd make it again in heartbeat!

Lettuce Wraps

2010-03-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight was lettuce-wrap night. I loosely based this evening's dinner on a recipe I developed a couple of years ago for EatingWell. We were in Montpelier all weekend and I hadn't made any real plan for dinner when we got home. We had ground beef from our meat CSA in the freezer, so I popped it in a pan and let it cook as it defrosted. I minced a can of water chestnuts and added some Chinese five-spice powder, ground ginger, hoisin sauce, chile-garlic sauce, water, soy sauce and a minced onion. I grated carrots and the rest of our daikon from our CSA and snipped some mint from our pot upstairs. I brought home a head of butterhead lettuce from work, and I even ate some wrapped in green cabbage leaves. I love this meal--so light and delicious.

Clean-Out-the-Fridge-Soup

2010-03-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

Dan likes to poke fun at me, but I take pride in not throwing a whole lot of stuff out. I can pretty much always find a use for leftovers. I save veggie scraps for stock, turn leftovers into something new, make chicken stock after I roast a chicken.

I thought dinner Friday night was going to be leftover chicken cobbler, but Dan had it for lunch. We were pressed for time, as we wanted to get to Montpelier to start a weekend in our old town. I didn't want to stop anywhere because we had 2 dogs with us that might kill each other if left alone in the car. But I also didn't want to take a lot of time to make anything.

I saw some cooked rice in the fridge and thought I'd start there. I dumped two partially empty boxes of broth in a pan -- one chicken, one beef -- then added a ton of salsa and the rice. I had like 1/2 cup of black beans, that went in too. I had brought home a few raw chicken tenders for Kayla but decided they'd be better in our soup. I also tossed in a handful or 2 of frozen DLGs from our CSA. I let that cook, then ladled it into bowls and topped them with crushed tortilla chips and shredded Cheddar.

Dan declared the "refrigerator schmegma" as one of the top 5 soups I ever made, "which is saying a lot," Dan said, "because you make a lot of soup--and a lot of good soup."

Good husband.

Chicken Cobbler

2010-03-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

I've been jonesing for Chicken Pot Pie. Every time I brought it up, Dan wrinkled his nose. So when I saw Mark Bittman's recipe for Chicken & Vegetable Cobbler I thought maybe he'd like that.

First, let me start off my saying I made many tweaks. Swapped a smallish yellow onion for the leek. We got oyster and shiitakes in our CSA this week, so I used those instead of the button mushrooms. Along with the sliced carrots, I added a few diced parsnips. (Shh, don't tell Dan.) Dan had roasted a chicken earlier in the week, so I pulled the rest of the meat off the bird instead of using thigh meat. I also used white ww flour and regular milk in the topping.

I'd say we were both slightly disappointed. The flavor was decent, but next time I'd make it with white flour and make more gravy.

The star of the meal was the salad: the base was our shoots. Then I added some bean sprouts still had hanging around from pho night. Next came some grated daikon. Then a smattering of dried cherries my mom gets me from Traverse City, MI (the best cherries ever!). I made a ginger-miso-tahini dressing made with miso from our CSA and real gosh-darned tahini from a Middle Eastern market in Detroit. I thought I might've stepped over the edge on weird combinations, but it was awesome. Dan even declared it one of the top 3 salads he had ever eaten. Knowing how many salads he's eaten just in the time we've been together, I'll take that as a compliment.

Pasta Night!

2010-03-10T16:33:00.000-08:00

It was pasta night at Chez Tesini. We got local whole-wheat (or ww blend?) linguine from VT Pasta Co in our share today. I made a delectable sauce based on tuna pomodoro. I sauteed a couple of small diced onions in olive oil, then added 2 large sliced garlic cloves, a hefty pinch of crushed red pepper and a bit of dried rosemary and thyme. Then I added some diced tomatoes I froze last summer, plus a couple of handfuls of frozen cherry tomatoes from this week's pickup and the juice of 1 lemon. Oh and I added 2 tomato paste "ice cubes." After that thickened, I added a bunch of sliced kalamata olives, 2 cans of drained chunk light tuna and the zest of the lemon. Served that with plenty of grated Parm over the linguine.

three thumbs up!

Dan's Best Dinner Ever + This Week's Pickup

2010-03-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

Go Dan Go! I had an appointment last night and knew I wouldn't get home until at least 6:30 but really wanted to roast the chicken I had defrosted from last week's meat share. So I sent Dan the recipe for Whole Roasted Lemon-Herb Chicken on a Bed of Vegetables from the latest issue of the magazine and asked Dan to start it. We didn't have the exact ingredients to make it, but Dan would rather improvise anyway. He chopped up the remaining red norland potatoes, a celeriac and a beet or 2 for the vegetable portion. I made a salad with most of the remaining shoots, clementines and olives. It was perhaps the best dinner Dan's ever made.

This week's pickup includes:
2 lbs Parsnips
2 lbs Purple Top Turnips
1 lb Valentine Radish
1 Bulb Garlic
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
Frozen Tomatoes
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
Elmore Mountain Flax Bread
VT Pasta Linguine
5 lbs Organic Rolled Oats

I'm laughing a little about the oats because I got 20# of oats last year from Quebec and we're still not even half-way through. Guess I'll be making some granola and then some this weekend! I'm looking forward to the pasta--that's a new thing from my experience last year! We're also getting mushrooms today--were supposed to get them last week but they didn't have enough I guess.

Leftovers Done Right

2010-03-08T16:27:00.000-08:00

Finally got around to making something with the leftover smoked pork chops and cabbage. I diced 2 celery stalks, 2 carrots, 1 kohlrabi and 3 or 4 red norland potatoes, simmered it in beef broth with some dried thyme, then added the diced leftover smoked pork chops and the cabbage mixture. Dan said it was surpisingly good :D

Dinner Tonight: Smoked Pork Chops & Cabbage-Apple "Kraut"

2010-03-05T16:16:00.000-08:00

MMMMM! I love smoked pork chops! They were from the pig we went in on from the farm we bring our compost to. Delicious! For dinner, I sauteed some sliced red onion in olive oil, then added 1/2 a medium head of thinly sliced red cabbage and a slice Macintosh apple. I poured in some apple cider and cider vinegar as well as a big dollop of whole-grain mustard. I let that cook a bit then put in the smoked pork chops, covering them with the "kraut." When they were hot, they were done!

Dan gave it 7.8/10 stars. He doesn't like bone-in meat.

3.3.10 Pickup

2010-03-03T05:03:00.000-08:00

This week's pickup...
1.5 lbs Red Thumb Fingerling Potatoes
2 lbs Red Beets
1 lb Celeriac
2 lbs Kohlrabi
3 lbs Green Cabbage
Frozen Braising Greens Mix
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
On the Rise Pizza Dough
Amir Hebib's Oyster and Shiitake Mushrooms
Maplebrook Fresh Mozzarella
Pete's Applesauce

It's also our first meat pickup! I'm so excited. We're getting...
a chicken
lamb loin chops
hot italian YAK sausage
ground beef

I still have carrots, some shoots, a daikon and a head of cabbage in my fridge, plus peppers in my freezer. I decided this week that I'll make a menu on Tues pm/Wed am to help use stuff in a timely manner.

Using what we have on hand and in this week's share I came up with....
smoked pork chops with quick homemade kraut and roasted potatoes

pizza with mozz, yak sausage, greens and salad

roast chicken and vegetables/potatoes

salmon with celeriac-carrot salad

chicken tacos with cabbage slaw

Dumpling Soup

2010-03-02T05:36:00.000-08:00

This is in no way local but I have to write this down for posterity's sake.

Dan has a little sinus infection going on and wanted something spicy and brothy for dinner. This is what I made.

I was already poaching chicken, so I used the leftover poaching liquid and added more chicken broth to it, along with minced ginger, chile-garlic sauce, soy sauce and 5 spice powder. I first added sliced celery, diced carrot and diced onion. After a bit I added diced purple snow peas and shredded cabbage. Then I added Ling Ling dumplings! After the dumplings were done, I stirred in whole cilantro leaves and topped our bowls with sliced radishes.

SO GOOD!

Snowy Day Pickup 2.24.10

2010-02-25T04:14:00.000-08:00

We almost missed our pick-up this week, like a few other folks it sounded like. Dan was crazy busy all day. I got home at 5:30 (the time our pick-up ends) and it took me a few minutes to wonder where it was. Luckily there was still someone at Shelburne Vineyard when I called and we braved the snow to get it. Yay! Here's what we got this week...

2 lbs Carrots
1 lb Daikon Radish
2 lbs Rutabagas
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
2-3 lbsRed Cabbagge
Frozen Winter Squash Puree
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
Elmore Mountain Pain Au Levain with Sifted Whole Wheat Flour
Champlain Orchards Cranberry Apple Cider
Pa Pa Doodles Farm Eggs
Sour Pickles

The bread is incredible--I just had an egg sammy with it for breakfast. Just sour enough. Nom. I'm looking forward to the squash puree--I've had a hankering for a soup I used to make when I worked at Smokejack's that was sweet potato with maple syrup, chipotle and cider vinegar. I have another container of it from last winter (oops!) so I'll be combing the 2. Made a spritzer with the cider and homemade seltzer last night. Also made slaw with a leftover head of cabbage, a couple of carrots, a daikon and a chopped yellow bell pepper with a dressing of mayo, yogurt, vinegar and Frank's :D

We still have some roots in the fridge from last week, but that's good as I'm planning on making root vegetable enchiladas for a party this weekend. I'm a little bummed bc I just bought a 5# bag of carrots Tuesday. I didn't think we'd get them in the share this week because they got them last week. Oh well, we eat those like they're going out of style so no worries.

Looking forward to the meat csa starting next week!!!

Mmmm... Local Potato Soup...

2010-02-21T13:54:00.000-08:00

We're in slightly rough shape today. We were in Mass all weekend, culminating in seeing some of Dan's old college friends last night. We were up too late drinking and watching the Olympics and got very little sleep today. We had a big brunch before we headed home and when I started talking about making x when we got home, then y for dinner, Dan was like, let's just have dinner. Right-o.

Our newsletter last week had a recipe for Winter Baked Potato Soup. I made a riff on it. Here's what I did...

Cooked 4 pieces of bacon from the pig we got in a Dutch oven. Added a chopped red onion, sauteed that in the rendered bacon fat, then added all of the nicola potatoes we got last week and a halved garlic clove. I covered it with milk and simmered the mixture until the potatoes were tender. I mashed everything until it was chunky and added grated special reserve Cabot sharp Cheddar and creme fraiche. I toasted some leftover Cyrus Pringle bread and put it on top of the soup along with the crumbled bacon. Nom nom...

To start, we had a sprout salad with grapefruit and avocado and a mustard-white wine vinaigrette.

I love that everything in the soup was grown or processed in Vermont. Two thumbs up.

1st CSA Pickup

2010-02-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

So Dan and I decided we needed a break as CSA members. For over a year, we were members of either Pete's Greens in winter and spring and Full Moon Farm in the summer and fall. This past fall we decided we wanted to actually go grocery shopping. Dan was sick of me telling him we couldn't have pho for dinner because we had too many other vegetables in the fridge that needed eating. I was sick of having to deal with the endless number of root vegetables that needed cooking.

Boy, weren't we both wrong.

When we decided to start back up with Pete's Greens for the spring share, it was a relief. We moved to Charlotte this winter and I no longer have the luxury of walking to a terrific co-op or even Shaw's when we ran out of something. Now I had to drive 20 minutes to get to a chain grocery store, longer to get to a natural-food store. I needed the share.

Even Dan was excited. He didn't even question rejoining, which surprised me a little. We made the decision several weeks ago and ever since, each week Dan asked, "Does the CSA start this week?" It was good to see his excitement.

And here I present to you, our first pick-up...

2 lbs Nicola Potatoes; 2 lbs Celeriac; 2 lbs Parsnips; 2 lbs Red Onions; 1-2 Heads of Garlic; Frozen Sweet Mixed Peppers; Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Salad Mix; Red Hen Cyrus Pringle Bread; Champlain Orchards Empire Apples; Butterworks Whole Wheat Flour; Vt Butter and Cheese Creme Fraiche

And the first pick-up, of course, brought the same challenges.
Dan hates parnsips.
I baked 2 loaves of bread this weekend that we still have parts of.
I just bought apples.
We both dislike green peppers.
I rarely cook with creme fraiche.

BUT! As always, we will embrace it! I'm out of whole-wheat flour. And garlic. And onions. Dan loves celeriac. And potatoes!

Presently I have roasting in the oven diced apples, celeriac, parsnips, onions tossed with canola oil, salt, pepper and dried thyme. It smells heavenly. Speaking of which, I should go eat it right now.

Best Valentine's Day Ever?

2010-02-14T16:01:00.000-08:00

Even though Valentine's Day didn't turn out exactly as I wanted it to, it definitely ranks as one of the best Valentine's Days ever.

I had high hopes for enjoying the first bacon of our pig along with homemade pumpkin-oat-bread French toast. I made the dough from the artisan bread in 5 min a day book last night, but didn't realize until I woke up this morning that the bread needed 2 hours to rise before baking for another hour. Thankfully, Martha had a pumpkin pancake recipe on her website that was quite possibly the best pancake recipe I've ever made (OK, maybe #3). The only pork we've eaten from our pig was Italian sausage, which was great. The bacon was pretty darn good, though less salty than run-of-the-mill bacon, which wasn't necessarily bad.

After refreshing Pain de Campagne part II, we headed to Montpelier for a cheese, chocolate and beer tasting at our favorite beer haunt.

And what an event it was. Lots of delicious pairings, but one of the most amazing things were these truffles from Laughing Moon chocolates which were quite literally this amazing cheese from Jasper Hill Farms (Willoughby) dipped in dark chocolate. :swoon My favorite match-up of the day was that same cheese (Willoughby) with a really nice Trappist trippel. Nom.

We were just going to stay for a glass of the cask beer (Allagash Black!) but ended up having another. And another. And another. Whoops! Luckily we stopped at a friends' house for a bit to sober up and made it home in one piece. And luckily there was leftover soup in our fridge to chow down on....

Now I just have to stay awake long enough to let the bread rise and bake...

Back in Bread-Baking Action

2010-02-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

My friend works for a market-research company. I signed up to take surveys and I get points for each one I complete. I had enough to cash in, so I got Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I had played with one of the recipes from the book that was published in Mother Earth News and thought maybe there would be some other ideas in there.

Dan saw a recipe for these pastries made with brioche dough, pastry cream and apricot halves. We went for them last weekend. I was so proud of him--he did 99% of the work. Unfortunately they didn't meet our expectations. Either our oven is too hot or there was an error with the cooking time (most likely the former), but we pulled them from the oven 10 minutes early and they were on their way to burning. They were edible, but just weren't the sweet, decadent delight we had expected.

Next.

When I was dabbling with baking bread this summer, I was playing with a pain de campagne from another bread book I have. I tried it again this week. It takes 4 days to make and rises with wild yeast alone. I unfortunately didn't get the timing right--to make it work you really need to start the dough at night, not in the morning as I did, unless you want to stay up until 3 am baking bread. Which I did not. So I opted to retard the dough in the fridge after the final refreshment. I baked it last night. It wasn't a total failure--it desperately needs more salt (I used kosher salt, but I'm guessing they wanted me to use table). I pulled off a section to use as the starter so I'll try again this weekend. It's a tad bit dense, but I'm hoping if I made it properly this time, the texture will be better.

Also up this weekend: Oatmeal-Pumpkin Bread. I think that will be fabulous in my favorite pancake recipe, Bread Pudding Pancakes.

Our winter CSA starts back up again this week. I'm desperate for it to begin again. We took a hiatus after being CSA members for nearly 2 years non-stop. We also bought into a meat share, which means we get 4-5 different meats each month. Yay!

Oh bread, how you frustrate me

2009-10-14T06:31:00.001-07:00

Why is it so hard for me to find a whole-wheat artisan style bread that really works? I was not happy with the results of the 50-50 whole wheat/white flour blend using the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day recipe. I've had some success with loaf pans but I'm a crust girl--I want a freeform loaf with lots of crusty goodness. I thought that the problem when I made the first batch using ABi5MaD was that my yeast was old. But we stirred up another batch with a fresh bag of yeast and it wasn't much better. The search continues...

Go Dan Go!

2009-09-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

Dan made dinner last night. He was miffed (I think) that I defrosted a whole chicken this weekend and didn't get around to roasting it myself. But he's done it before, I knew he could!

I arrived at home to a chicken roasting away (and smelling delish!), chopped rutabaga and potatoes on the cutting board, cooked bacon and minced rosemary and garlic. He was going to mash the rutabaga and potatoes, I knew. And he had called asking about bacon cooking. I couldn't believe how delicious the bacon-rosemary-garlic-mashed rutabaga & potatoes were! Wow. I whipped up a red wine gravy from the roasting pan to go along with it. AND he warmed up some applesauce with fresh apple chunks in it for another side dish. What a guy I have, huh? I wish I had taken a picture of his beautiful bird.

Mexican Stew + Fresh-Baked Bread = Divine Fall Dinner

2009-09-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

I'll have to take a picture of the stew I ended up making for dinner last night--so divine! This is what I did:

Sauteed onion and celery. Added salsa I froze last summer plus a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes (one of my favorite convenience foods), diced potatoes and some water. Let that cook a bit. Then I added sliced seeded yellow crookneck squash, chopped collards and lacinato kale, diced roasted red pepper chicken sausage and cooked white beans. Oh my! Topped with a bit of sour cream and some hot sauce, it was the perfect dinner for a rainy fall evening.

My bread was pretty much a success. Perhaps I didn't bake it long enough--though it sounded hollow when I tapped it, it was a little soft. It was slightly challenging to cut. That being said, between dinner last night and breakfast this morning, it's almost gone. The rest of the dough is hanging out in the fridge. Maybe pizza tonight? I'll have to bake another loaf tomorrow I imagine.

Fall is here in Vermont

2009-09-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

Fall is here. It's a hard time for me because I love fall, it's my favorite season by far, but I don't love winter. I like it enough but I wish fall was longer and winter was shorter. Here are my musings for the day.

Our CSA this summer got hit by late blight. We received nary a tomato. The wet weather also made it a low harvest season. But I feel I still got my money's worth. I was saddened when they sent out an email telling us how hard each crop was hit by the blight or the weather. And one member told the farmers they were upset they joined this CSA again this year. How dare she. That's part of the fun, the adventure, the risk. Welcome to reality.

Our garden was an interesting experiment. The community garden we're in also got hit by late blight. I did manage to get a few tomatoes from the pots at our house. The things that did really well were mustard greens, ground cherries, beets, green beans. We grew head lettuce for the first time. We were too busy to preserve much this summer. We got things in too late and we end loaded our summer with out of town activities to do any meaningful putting up projects. Hopefully next summer we can do more.

Dan made me sad the other day when he said he didn't want to do the winter CSA. He said he's sick of having to eat what we have. I guess we've been in a CSA for over a year now. I can see how he feels that way. He wants to make things that involve other produce we're not getting from the CSA and it's hard for me to justify buying more produce when we can barely eat what's in the crisper now. I guess I have to indulge him occasionally so he'll indulge my love of eating locally.

Today's rainy and blah. I'm trying a new bread project today. I've already made the basic recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. IT was fine, but I really want a whole-wheat bread recipe. I found Alexandra's Kitchen blog yesterday, who wrote about successfully making the recipe with half whole-wheat flour. So, that's working right now.

I also have a pot of beans simmering away on the stove and a chicken defrosting. I plan to roast the chicken later so we can make pho this week (one of the dishes Dan's been craving). Then the beans will go into a Mexican-inspired stew. I defrosted some salsa still lingering in my freezer from last summer that tastes more like chili base than salsa. I think I'll put potatoes and mustard greens in the stew and some chicken sausage along with the beans.

Today's Pickup

2009-07-21T17:31:00.001-07:00

Since I don't get emails about what we're getting, let's see if I can remember what I got this week!

salad greens
onions
kohlrabi
broccoli
carrots
red russian kale
dill
cukes
zucchini

leftover from last week: broccoli, onions, cukes

tonight i made:

Salmon with Cucumbers & Dill

to use up some of those cukes from last week. it was pretty good actually!

1st june pickup

2009-06-04T18:04:00.000-07:00

wow, it's so exciting as the growing season gets warmer here in vermont. things have picked up the past few weeks thanks to pete's greenhouses. our pickup last night included:

Mesclun Greens; Head of Green or Red Lettuce; 2 lbs Nicola Potatoes; 1 Bunch of Basil; 1 Bunch Sweet Salad Turnips; 1 Bunch of Beet Greens; 1 Bunch of Sorrel; 1 Bunch of Wild Arugula; 1 Bunch of Easter Egg Radishes; 1 Bunch of Pac Choi, 1 Bunch of Parsley, 1 Bunch of Red Giant Mustard, Vermont Cranberry Company Balsamic Vinegar; Vermont Butter and Cheese Fresh Goat Cheese;
and Elmore Mountain Bread Pizza Dough!

so last night we had a beautiful salad with leftover greens from last week, the salad turnips, grated carrots and beets (beets from a week or 2 ago). then i was strapped for time from staying so late at work so we had pasta with tomatoes i dehydrated last summer, pesto from last summer and chopped olives. yum.

tonight was a salad of shredded napa (from last week) and sliced cucumber, carrots and radishes with a miso vinaigrette (we got miso twice this winter) and frozen dumplings (ha).

i'm very excited because i seem to have finally found a whole-wheat bread recipe that i think i can work on and improve. it's from bob's red mill's baking book. stay tuned for more on that.

Spring!

2009-04-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

Spring is here and we're getting more and more fun stuff! Lots of segues have been happening. There are less shoots in our bag of greens, more other mixed greens, more and more spinach. We got our first sunchokes, which we've enjoyed raw in salads (were delicious instead of celery in curried chicken salad!) We got a bunch more parsnips much to Dan's chagrin. When I was cutting some up tonight to make roasted roots, he was like, more parsnips? Poor guy, he has been such a good sport.

So tomorrow we're getting
Nicola Potatoes; Carrots; European Greenhouse Cucumbers or Baby Salad Turnips; Pac Choi; Mesclun Mix*; 8 oz of Pete's Onion Puree; 1 Dozen Farm Fresh Eggs; 1 Pint Bonnieview Ewe's Feta; Bag of Champlain Orchards Red Delicious Apples; and...one basil plant!

Pasta Night

2009-04-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, it's been a while. Life is stressful and blogging isn't my top priority right now. But here I go!

The snow has mostly melted and I'm thinking about all things spring and summer. We went to a seed-starting workshop 2 weeks ago and tiny sprouts of hungarian wax peppers, broccoli and basil are coming up. The chocolate peppers are taking their sweet time. I'm starting to collect seed starting paraphenelia in anticipation of planting boxes and our community garden plot. It's hard to believe I'll be growing my own food again!

Still have Pete's CSA. Our vegetables are dying off, and that's sort of ok with I'm pretty much over root vegetables. I still have rutabaga and celeriac in my fridge and we just got more parsnips this week. Here's what else we got:

Red Onions; Mixed Colorful Carrots; Parsnips; Mixed Greens and Shoots; Frozen Strawberries; Japanese Style Miso from Les Aliments Massawippi; Oyster -or- Shitaki Mushrooms from Amir Habib; Butterworks Farm Cornmeal; Butterworks Farm Buttermilk; Grafton Classic Cheddar Ends

I had defrosted some of my homemade marinara for dinner tonight, so I seared the oyster mushrooms, sauteed a bunch of chard, added some red-wine braised onions leftover from last night and dumped in a jar of my sauce. We had that over pasta. Nom Nom.

I've also made homemade bread the past few weeks. The first week I tried a no-knead recipe from Mother Earth News. The flavor was incredible but the bread was short. Last week I adapted a honey-wheat bread recipe from Allrecipes that tasted great. I experimented with a loaf, a round loaf in a cake pan and a free-form loaf on a pizza stone. It was a tad sweet for me, I'd cut down on the honey next time. Now I have a chef starting for a pain de campagne from a bread cookbook. It takes 4 days to make, so I guess Saturday we'll enjoy it.

Sick of Mexican Food, Who Thought It Possible?

2009-03-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

After a weekend of eating Mexican food, we were over it. But that's pretty much what our refrigerator was full with.

We had lots of milk. We had lots of cheese. So I made Mac & Cheese.

But I didn't have the frozen broccoli the recipe called for, and we needed something to jazz it up. So I sauteed some red onion and oyster mushrooms from our share in some olive oil. Added some red wine, chard and broth. Cooked until tender. Then I tossed in the remains of our sprouts/salad greens mix and let that wilted. Then stirred it into the sauce along with the cooked pasta. Pretty good for a quick meal!

A light fish dinner was in order

2009-03-02T05:11:00.000-08:00

After a weekend of what seemed like nonstop eating, a light fish dinner was in order last night. A friend had posted a recipe for Ginger-Glazed Mahi, so I tried that with tilapia. Fired up the rice cooker (oh rice cooker, how I love you!) and made a great veggie stir-fry with mostly CSA vegetables. I used shallots, carrots, purple cabbage, celery and shredded daikon, with lots of ginger and garlic. I added the rest of the fish marinade at the end and let that glaze the vegetables. Delicious!

Ah, I miss city life...

2009-03-02T05:02:00.000-08:00

It's great having a father-in-law who's a dentist. I broke a filling last weekend so Dan and I ventured down to the big city (aka Boston) for 2 days. He fixed my filling and we had an amazing meal in the North End later that night. We met Dave at the entrance of the North End and since we had some time to kill before meeting his partner, we scooted around the side streets so he could introduce us to the fellow who helped Dave get his Italian passport. Dan and I might be getting dual citizenship as well, so he thought he should introduce us to this guy. It was like stepping back into the past, his small office had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with old leatherbound volumes of ancient mythology. We then stopped into an Italian grocery where we sampled cheese and bought some to bring home. We stepped back onto the street, which was busy on this balmy late February afternoon. It was so warm, people were sans jackets, sipping espresso on the sidewalk. I really felt like I was in Italy (almost).

After a glass of wine, we went to Trattoria Il Panino for the best Italian meal I've enjoyed outside of Italy. We got to sit right in front of their open kitchen, which was about the size of a galley kitchen, and watched the 5 cooks and dishwasher dance the dance of dinner service, never bumping into each other, never burning anyone, never a harsh word. It was really beautiful. And so was the food.

For my first course, I had Carpaccio di Bresaola, very thinly sliced dried cured beef topped with a pile of lemon-dressed peppery arugula and lots of shaved aged Parmesan. Then I had (at the suggestion of our server), Paccheri al Ragu, a Neopolitan dish of rigatoni tossed with the most magnificent beef and tomato ragu. I ate my meal so slowly that night, enjoying every bite. Unfortunately, we went to a cafe afterwards where I had the most mediocre gelati. Not the best way to end an amazing night. But that pasta is etched into my brain forever.

Simple is good

2009-02-25T17:30:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to feel a cold coming on and I got home late tonight so dinner was simple but delicious: panini with our clothbound cheddar and apple butter. I put some locally made kraut on mine. Yum.

Quick Apple-Cabbage "Kraut" with Kielbasa & Roasted Potatoes

2009-02-24T17:12:00.000-08:00

Knowing we're getting more potatoes and feeling slightly overwhelmed by the multiple heads of cabbage lurking in my fridge, I made this quick dish.

Roasted cut up potatoes and quartered garlic cloves.
Seared halved kielbasa in a bit of oil. Took that out of the pan and sauteed 1 sliced red onion until slightly tender. Then I added 1 1/4 small heads green cabbage, thinly sliced, about 1/2 cup of cider and 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar and a bit of salt. I cooked that until the cabbage was tender, then added a sliced apple and the kielbasa. After the apple softened a bit, I added some more apple cider vinegar.

I tossed the potatoes with lots of chopped parsley and served it all with some grainy mustard on the side. And a cold beer of course.

Bread Pudding Pancakes

2009-02-23T18:12:00.000-08:00

So we go this maple apple bread from our CSA and I thought we'd use the end of the loaf to make French toast. I"m more of a savory breakfast kind of girl but Dan loves sweet stuff. He made himself French toast on Sat morning so I didn't want to make it for him Sunday. I recalled finding a recipe for Bread Pudding Pancakes at some point so I did some searching online.

These were quite possibly the best pancakes ever. I added some dried cherries to the mix and a touch of vanilla--yum yum yum. Light, tender, great texture--even better with the chai maple syrup we got a month or so ago!

Local Tofu

2009-02-18T05:48:00.001-08:00

We're very lucky to have Vermont Soy, which makes soymilk and artisan tofu. We got some of their baked soy-ginger tofu in a share a week or so ago. Dan's been wanting lettuce wraps for several months now, so I made some with the tofu. They were great, here's what I did:

Cut up about a bunch of scallions into small lengths, chopped some leftover broccoli, cut up some leftover red bell pepper into thin strips and sauteed that in some canola oil. I added about a cup of leftover brown rice, the cubed tofu, some hoisin and sambal olek. We also got some shiitakes last week, but I have a bad childhood memory from them (really) so I sauteed them separately for Dan. Then I shredded carrots, a daikon and chopped some fresh mint. I crisped some green leaf lettuce and dinner was ready in about 20 minutes. Yum!

Root Vegetable Gratin

2009-02-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

I wrote a story on root vegetables for the December issue of EatingWell and accompanying recipes. One of my favorites--and most challenging to develop--was Root Vegetable Gratin. It was one of my favorite recipes once I finished it, but even though I've had a plethora of roots from my CSA all winter, I didn't actually make it at home until last night.

Dan has a love-hate relationship with roots, as in he loves carrots and beets and hates parsnips, turnips, celeriac and rutabaga. So I thought he might not like it since I used celeriac, beets and turnips. But he did and enthusiastically dug into a second piece. I didn't have Gruyere but had Parmesan, so I used that instead. My sauce was a bit too thick, probably because I didn't accurately measure my flour (ahem) so I thinned it with a bit more milk. I served it with a salad made with our spicy sprouts, julienned red bell pepper and grapefruit tossed with grapefruit juice and evoo. Delish. And so were the leftovers today!

so behind...

2009-02-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

Things have been too crazy to blog, but I'm going to try to start getting back into it again!

This week's pick up:
Mix of Sunflower & Radish Shoots; Mixed Colorful Carrots; Daikon Radish; Red & White Beets; Green Cabbage; Shallots; Garlic; Frozen Squash Puree; Butterworks Farm Organic Yogurt; Vermont Soy Maple-Ginger Baked Tofu; Champlain Orchards Apple Cider; Oyster -or- Shiitake Mushrooms from Amir Habib.

The shoots have been great. The thing I disliked most about our winter share was that we didn't have much green stuff as the winter progressed. I get it, but I'm also trying not to buy many veggies since we have so many from our share. So the shoots have been most welcome.

But I'm waaaay over the daikon. Who's got some good recipes for me? I'm dying here!

a break in the action

2008-12-22T05:10:00.000-08:00

i'm not gonna lie--i'm pretty psyched that we have a week off from our CSA this week. i'm a little overwhelmed with roots!

we got a beautiful share last week:
Orange Storage Carrots; Cippolini Onions; Celeriac; Mars Onions; Bunch Curly Parsley; Mixed Gold and Chioggia Beets; Bag Claytonia (Miner's Lettuce); Sorrel*; Leeks; Red Norland Potatoes; Red Shallots; Carnival Squash; Tullochgorum Popcorn; Pete's Greens Kitchen Applesauce; Champlain Orchards Macintosh Apples; Champlain Valley Creamery Triple Creme Cheese; and Elmore Mountain Flax Seed Bread.

the cheese was mind-blowing. the popcorn is beautiful (but apparently looks normal when it's popped, darn!) and the applesauce is just sweet enough.

so what have i been making: i made a lovely root vegetable and cabbage soup inspired by this recipe with carrots, parsnips, potatoes, celeriac and beets with some savoy cabbage thrown in. it was so satisfying and really flavorful.

the rest of the cabbage went into slaw for tacos with chile-braised beef and beans.

we had a nice salad with the claytonia, orange, radishes and bell peppers last night with our tacos.

today i'm making irish lamb stew--i can plow through some of the roots and potatoes and i defrosted some lamb that's been languishing away in my freezer for much too long.

ooh--i made a yummy egg bake the other morning. i was cleaning out my fridge and had these things:
*bread ends that needed to be used
*a little breakfast sausage
*portobello mushrooms
*heavy cream
*egg whites left over from cookie baking
*sundried tomato tapenade

so i cooked the sausage and cooked a mushroom in the sausage fat. i sliced and toasted the bread ends and spread them with tapenade. those lined the bottom of a baking dish. i sprinkled those with the sausage and mushrooms then poured over a mix of egg white, eggs, cream and milk and sprinkled that with sharp cheddar--YUM!

what an awesome evening

2008-12-14T19:15:00.000-08:00

we had such a great evening. dan's been SLAVING away at his 2 final take-home exams but we still had some friends over for dinner tonight. was probably a great break for him--he's been locked in his office since noon, with barely a break (i finally made him take kayla for a very short walk before dinner). anyway, it was really great to hang out with pj & katy tonight and i was able to make an amazing dinner with many of our CSA goodies.

*salad of claytonia & spinach w/ pomegranate seeds, toasted pine nuts, salad turnips & champagne vinaigrette
*red wine braised roots over barley
*homemade pumpkin pie with rum-scented whipped cream--i roasted the pie pumpkin we got a few weeks ago and followed the JoC recipe with an all-butter crust and threw in a slug of appleton reserve rum and cinnamon when i was whipping the cream

i'm not a pumpkin pie fan, but apparently mine was good--dan said he could never go back to canned pumpkin and provided me with this analogy: it was like always eating the peanut butter you find in reese's peanut butter cups, then eating REAL peanut butter for the 1st time--you could never go back to eating the reese's peanut butter.

my only beef was that the crust was sog-o-rama--but apparently that's normal? i can't even tell you one time that i've ever had pumpkin pie so i wasn't prepared for taht. i didn't blind bake the crust but it said not to. maybe i will next time?

i was so excited too--my friend/coworker nicci has been using all the root vegetable recipes i developed for my last feature to use her bounty of roots she's been getting from her csa. i have been getting tons of roots as well, but haven't been using my recipes--not sure WHY i haven't, but pulling out that braise tonight was perfect--especially because i was cooking for a couple with one vegetarian and the other who wasn't eating cheese or spicy food (there went my trademark mexican night!) but i'm glad i had those contraints because dinner was delish!

and the company was even better :) we rocked out to hendrix, drank wine and enjoyed a good meal--to me, there isn't much better in life.

Catching up

2008-12-11T17:24:00.000-08:00

So, I was out of town a lot--I was in Jamaica for a work trip then came home for a few days before heading to Michigan to see my family for Thanksgiving. Let's do a little catch up here:

week of 11/25
Yellow Potatoes (Some Russets and Other Mixed In); Bunch Kale (Maybe, see below*); Shallots; Mars and/or Torpedo Onions; Turnips -or- Rutabaga; Pie Pumpkin -or- Red Kuri; Parsnips; Brussels Sprouts; Bag of Greens (Probably Mix of Claytonia and Tatsoi); 2 Mini Decorative Pumpkins; Butterworks Farm Early Riser Cornmeal; Fresh Cranberries from Vermont Cranberry Company.

week of 12/3
Sugarsnax Carrots; Chioggia and/or Red Beets; All Blue Potatoes; Brussels Sprouts; Sweet Salad Turnips; Yellow Storage Onions; Bright Lights and/or Ruby Red Chard; Mix of Claytonia and Spinach; Ploughgate Creamery Acer Cheese; Champlain Valley Apiaries Raw Honey; Elmore Mountain Multigrain Bread.

week of 12/10
Orange Storage Carrots; Parsnips; Garlic; Mars Onions; Bunch Curly Parsley; Red -or- Green Cabbage; Bag Mesclun; Bright Lights Chard;* Butterworks Farm Yogurt; Pearled Barley; Oyster -or- Shiitake Mushrooms from Amir Habib; and Red Hen Squash Bread.

some comments
*the acer cheese was AMAZING. similar to brie but much better flavor
*love the claytonia/spinach mix, but the claytonia has longish thin stems (edible) that make it a little unweildly to eat--please don't think i'm complaining, as i'm so happy to be getting greens in mid-december!

still have
*honey
*cornmeal
*barley
*pie pumpkin
*sausage
*cranberries
*lots of turnips, potatoes, parsnips and carrots in my fridge!

i'm really glad that i did the winter share. it's SO challenging. more challenging than i ever thought. see, here's the thing, in the summer, i can make a meal out of anything--greens, tomatoes, zucchini--ANYTHING.

but how do you turn brussels sprouts into dinner? parsnips? it's a challenge. we don't eat a lot of meat to enjoy these delicious vegetables as a side dish with. roasted vegetables are great--but what do you serve it with? i'm trying to make as much of our meals as i can using only what i'm getting from our csa--but i don't want to serve starchy vegetables with a side of starch.

some things i've made lately:
*roasted turnips, beets, blue potatoes, carrots & parsnips
*a soup with potatoes, frozen corn, tomato puree, cilantro, crushed red pepper & lime juice
*chicken sausage with marinara, red wine-braised onions and chard over toast with parmesan
*curried squash soup

oh, here's a fun experience i had: so i had a glut of squash and i thought i'd make my curried squash soup (super simple with coconut milk, red thai curry paste, lime juice & brown sugar). i thought it would be easier to roast all the squash instead of peeling it and cooking it in water like i normally did. but maybe i didn't roast it long enough, the skin didn't come off super easily. so THEN, i thought, oh, i can put it through the food mill and the skin would stay in the food mill--BUT the skin was so soft, it got milled along with the squash. of course, i didn't realize this until i got through 1/3 of the squash, so i had to toss it. so lesson learned: peel squash before milling it!

slacker...

2008-12-10T09:52:00.001-08:00

i know i'm a slacker. i'll try to update this weekend--been out of town a lot. this week's pick-up:

Orange Storage Carrots; Parsnips; Garlic; Mars Onions; Bunch Curly Parsley; Red -or- Green Cabbage; Bag Mesclun; Bright Lights Chard;* Butterworks Farm Yogurt; Pearled Barley; Oyster -or- Shiitake Mushrooms from Amir Habib; and Red Hen Squash Bread.

This Week's Pick-up

2008-11-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

So excited--check it out:

Mixed Colorful Carrots; Kale in Same Bag as Mesclun; Garlic; Celeriac; Leeks; Winter Squash; Kohlrabi; Napa Cabbage; Manchester Cheese from Consider Bardwell Farm; 1/2 Gallon Champlain Orchards Apple Cider; Elmore Mountain Honey Oat Bread.

Never had the cheese before, so I'm freaking out to try it!

I'm feeling overwhelmed with squash--I have 3 kuri (or 4?) and an acorn. I'm going to a potluck on Thursday so I might just roast it all up.

Tonight I got home late so it was a non-CSA dinner (except for our salad). Tomorrow I hope to make the nummy fish dinner idea I posted yesterday.

Perishable items from last week to use up: brussels sprouts and salad turnips and cilantro--hope they'll all be gone tomorrow!

CSA PICKUP WEEK #4

2008-11-17T18:13:00.000-08:00

pickup last week was:
Red Kuri Squash; Russet Potatoes; Mixed Medium Beets; 2 Stalks Brussels Sprouts; Torpedo Onions; Bag Mixed Spinach and Claytonia; Green and/or Purple Pac Choi; Bunch Cilantro; Sweet Salad Turnips; Rolled Oats from Quebec; Butterworks Farm Whole-Wheat Pastry Flour; Red Hen Pain au Levain; Dozen Eggs.

i was in jamaica so luckily dan picked it up. i just got home last night so i did some cooking today finally with it. sauteed the pac choi with an onion, leftover carrots and some salad turnips and served chicken & vegetable dumplings over it for a yummy quick dinner. i steamed the beets to have for salads this week. on the menu tomorrow: seared flounder with cilantro pesto and baked potatoes and roasted brussels sprouts.

Oh, sweet kale...

2008-11-10T17:53:00.000-08:00

We heart kale at our house. We lovingly refer to any dark leafy green as DLGs but kale might be our favorite. Tonight, we had DLG tacos--I learned how delicious they can be thanks to my favorite Mexican cookbook author, Rick Bayless. We published his chard tacos in an issue of EatingWell and we make them all the time at home.

So tonight, I braised the kale and served it in corn tortillas with the green tomato salsa I made yesterday, feta and hot sauce. I made some homemade black beans and roasted some delicata squash for side dishes.

Really surprised at how much we're enjoying the green tomato salsa. I'll have to remember that next year.

A Perfect Pizza

2008-11-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

Why don't I take pictures of what I cook???

I made a beautiful pizza on Friday night. I made pesto with the sorrel, the remaining supermarket basil and the rest of the parsley from week #1. I sauteed the chard with onion and garlic. Then thinly sliced the buffalo mozzarella. I roasted a delicata squash. That was the pizza.

The dough we got was WICKED wet. I liberally coated my peel with flour and when I went to put the 'za on the peel, it was stuck like glue. We ended up folding it over and making a calzone, then I made the 2nd one on parchment paper. But it was so good. Made a salad with the lettuce we got, some salad turnips, pine nuts and pomegranate seeds.

Today I'm making Italian Peasant Soup with Cabbage, Beans & Cheese. And I made a delightfully tart green tomato salsa with sweet onion, garlic and cilantro. Tomorrow we'll have some Mexican food with that.

Veggies Galore

2008-11-06T17:38:00.000-08:00

While I had no problem with my summer CSA, I am not able to keep up with the winter one. I guess I don't *have* to keep up, most of the stuff we're getting now keeps more than what I was getting this summer. But it's still making me feel bad.

For instance, I still had the pac choi from week #1 left, and finally cooked it up tonight. Most of the outer leaves needed to be tossed, but it was alright. I made pho, using tilapia instead of the beef (I think I liked it better!), added a pinch each of 5 spice powder and ground ginger to the broth, and since I didn't have enough pac choi, I chopped enough savoy cabbage to make up the difference. The result was my favorite batch of pho ever.

I also sauteed the shiitakes. I have a bad history with shiitakes. When I was a kid, my friend and I made this authentic Chinese dinner that used a bunch of dried mushrooms. I was 12 then. The next day, I could not get the smell of the mushrooms off my hands. It made me ill. To this day, I can't handle the smell of them.

So the shiitakes are all him. Which is sad, because these were the most beautiful mushrooms I've ever seen. I sliced them all up and sauteed them for Dan. He added a bunch to his soup tonight and he can use them the next few days.

So tomorrow, this is my plan: make pesto with sorrel and the rest of the basil I bought for the pho, use that instead of red sauce to top a pizza that will have delicata squash and fresh mozzarella on it. Maybe some sauteed chard too? I'll probably use that beautiful head of lettuce to make my new favorite salad: greens, pomegranate seeds and pine nuts with champagne vinaigrette.

Now that I know what I'm doing with the sorrel, I need to look for cabbage recipes...

CSA PICKUP WEEK #3

2008-11-04T15:59:00.001-08:00

Red Kuri Squash; Acorn Squash; Garlic; Walla Walla Onions; Head Lettuce; Green Tomatoes; Bag Mixed Spinach, Baby Tatsoi and Claytonia; Bunch Sweet Salad Turnips; Bunch Kale; Bunch Sorrel; Oyster or Shitakii Mushrooms from Amir Habib; Bufala di Vermont Mozzarella Cheese; Elmore Mountain Pizza Dough.

a cooking marathon

2008-11-02T14:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had a cooking marathon. By 9:30 am a pot of curried carrot soup was finished. While that was cooking, I made a plan on what to make with the rest of my CSA goodies.

On the list:
stuffed cabbage rolls
lasagna
peanut noodles

OK, that was easy, so now on to prepping. I sliced mushrooms and diced an onion for the lasagna sauce and julienned daikon, carrots and kohlrabi for the peanut noodles. Took the dogs for a walk and headed to the grocery store for the rest of the provisions needed for dinner.

Upon returning home, I prepared the lasagna--with ground turkey, parsley, mushrooms, onions and tomatoes layered with ricotta, spinach, mozzarella and parm--and made the stuffed cabbage rolls as close to how my Aunt Elaine had taught me as I could remember (I think I'd use less rice next time and I cooked the cabbage which I might not do--or do less--next time). I realized after I put the water on that I didn't have spaghetti for my peanut noodles, so I'll finish that project tomorrow.

And it didn't take me that long! I was able to do laundry and other chores in between food projects. At 3ish, we decided to head out on a bike ride. Dan and friends found a really easy way to get to Red Hen bakery in Middlesex, a 14-mile round-trip ride. We got warm drinks (it was way colder than expected!) and a cookie and headed back. When we got home, the cabbage rolls made a warm and cozy meal. I quickly roasted a delicata squash and a sweet potato for the side and we opened a bottle of McNeils Imperial Stout--yum!

And now we have food for most of the week--leftover cabbage rolls, the whole pan of lasagna and the soup.

Baked Tostadas rule

2008-10-30T16:43:00.000-07:00

Tonight I made baked tostadas, topped with mashed homemade black beans, sauteed onions and peppers (from last week's csa pick-up), jack cheese, salsa and avocado. On the side we had slaw. I also made the leftover roasted potatoes into a southwestern potato salad with hot sauce, mayo and chopped pickled jalapenos. Dan wasn't a fan of the tostada--he doesn't like "messy" food (insert eye rolling here) nor did he like the potato salad (more for me!) But it was delicious.

Now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of the food in my fridge! A project for Saturday morning...

WINTER CSA PICKUP--WEEK #2

2008-10-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

This week's pickup is so very exciting!

Kohlrabi; Sugarsnax Carrots; Bunch Leeks; Daikon Radish; Savoy Cabbage; Red Kuri Squash; Delicata Squash; Red Mars Onions; Bunch Bright Lights Chard; Bunch Bull's Blood Beet Greens; Bunch Cilantro; Butterworks Farm Plain Yogurt; Champlain Orchards Liberty Apples; 1 Pete's Chicken

From last week I still have pac choi, onions, shallots, delicata and bell peppers. I won't be home for dinner tonight, but tomorrow I must use the bell peppers before they go bad.

I've been wanting to make Singapore chicken rice for a long time, so I think I'm going to make that with the chicken then do some sort of Asian slaw/saute with the Asian-y stuff I have.

Week 1--Winter CSA

2008-10-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

so we took the plunge and got the winter csa from pete's greens. it's a little pricey, but the first week's pick-up was well worth it!

our booty:

Fennel; Bunch Sweet Salad Turnips; Mixed Sweet Peppers; Walla Walla (Sweet Onions); Bunch Mizuna; Green and/or Purple Pac Choi; Delicata Squash; Bunch Curley Parsley; Red Norland Potatoes; Shallots; Vermont Cranberry Company Dried Cranberries; Maplebrook Farm Ricotta Cheese; and Elmore Mountain Pain au Levain bread.

we had leftovers to consume last night, so we didn't cook anything up yet. i'm not worried about using anything, except maybe the parsley. that's the one herb i don't do much yet. seems to cold to make tabbouleh (and i much prefer to make it with flat-leaf parsley) so i don't know if i'll use it. SO EXCITED about the ricotta! i can't decide if i should eat it with poached figs or make lasagna....

Enchis Enchis Enchis!

2008-10-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

what an amazing dinner this evening. i had a decent crop of tomatillos this summer that i made rick bayless' essential roasted tomatillo-serrano salsa with. it freezes beautifully. i defrosted some and made enchiladas with chicken and chard from a local farm, pepper Jack cheese and yellow onion. i also busted out my new mortar and pestle to make guac (which, sadly, was too small for guac making) and made a lovely cabbage-bell pepper slaw.

if i had softened butter, i'd be busting out an apple cake right now, but alas, it'll have to wait til tomorrow.

Taking the plunge

2008-10-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

Man, have I been horrible about updating this!

The Eat Local challenge totally fizzled--it was 2 weeks before our wedding and I wasn't prepared and had too many things going on that week to really commit. I'll be ready next year though!

Today, karma hit—I've been waffling about getting a Pete's Greens CSA—I participated the first time they did a winter share and I was really disappointed. BUT I think kinks have been worked out so I'm trying again! I emailed to see if they had any spots left and lo and behold, they had 2--and I know the woman who's in charge so she said she'd hold one for me. I'm warily excited :) Starts on Wednesday!

I've been going through the last of my CSA produce the past few days. Last night I made one of my favorite soups—so easy and vegan as well. I cooked a peeled cubed acorn squash and red kuri in water. When it was really tender, I put it through a food mill and put it back on the stove with fresh lime juice, red Thai curry paste, coconut milk, brown sugar and salt--DELICIOUS!

I have a few delicata calling my name too—want to save those for just roasting later this week.

Day 2...

2008-09-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

day 1 did not end well. after caving in, starving, to a cider donut (the cider was local and the donut was made locally), we ordered pizza for dinner (again, a local joint, not dominos). like how i'm justifying all this? i'm not trying to do that, really. it's just much harder than i imagined.

i didn't prepare well enough this weekend. i'm hoping the rest of the week goes better. i had an all local breakfast. snacks were all local. lunch was leftover potato salad with potatoes from my csa and homegrown herbs--tossed with not-at-all-local mayo... but it was leftover and it needed to be eaten and i was in a hurry this morning.

also throwing me off is that i work at a food magazine and we're testing recipes for our next issue. i can't not taste them, they're new recipes, so i knew this was never going to be perfect. but alas. tonight is local chicken (which will help with lunches and meals the rest of the week) with some local roots. should be delicious and get us on track for the rest of the week.

Day 1 of the Eat Local Challenge

2008-09-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday was supposed to be Day 1 of the Eat Local Challenge. But Saturday, a behemoth zucchini called to me so I made a batch of Chocolate-Zucchini Muffins. I work up yesterday and ate one. Most of the ingredients weren't local, and quite honestly, I wasn't mentally prepared for the Challenge yet, so I decided I'd start today.

Let me start off my saying that almost all the produce I eat is local (at this time of year at least). Most of the meat is. I exclusively buy local eggs. But I wanted to see if I could go the extra mile and only eat locally for the week. The group that organizes this effort locally plays by "Marco Polo rules"—i.e. anything MP carried on his journey, like spices, were fine. They also allow up to 5 wild cards per person. Well obviously coffee was one of mine!

The local localvores also had a kit you could buy with some basics. I picked mine up yesterday. It was packaged really nicely and had dried cranberries, Maine sea salt, sunflower oil, apple cider vinegar, wheat berries, black beans, oats and flour, all in a nice canvas bag. I defrosted a chicken I thought we'd roast for meat throughout the week and cooked up some wheat berries and black beans. I skipped my regular favorite bread for a whiter version from the same bakery that was all-local, bought a 1/2 peck of apples from a local orchard plus a pint of Italian (but locally-grown) plums.

I thought it would be easy but honestly it's just like dieting. You want what you can't have and you have to spend time to prepare. The chocolate zucchini muffins were on the counter this morning and I wanted one (but didn't have one). I made a wheat berry & black bean salad with leftover grilled veggies (from my CSA) this morning for Dan & I for lunch.

I have no idea what we're having for dinner--I'll most likely be at work too late to roast the chicken and Dan won't be home until 6:30 either. I used almost all our summer vegetables for dinner last night. My CSA pickup isn't until tomorrow and all I have for veggies are root vegetables, which I'm not really in the mood for. I'll scare something up.

Wednesday's Dinner

2008-09-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

Last night was all about keeping it simple--but it was so stunning and colorful. At the cabin last weekend, I pulled up some basil and made pesto. I grilled a couple summer squash and chopped tomatoes from the CSA, supplementing with some from our own pots. I tossed all that with ravioli and served it with grilled Mad River Grain bread (the.best.bread.ever). The yellow squash, green pesto and red tomatoes was picture-perfect (of course I didn't take a picture...)

Frost threatened last night but I was hopeful we wouldn't get any. I did harvest any close-to-ripe tomatoes and tomatillos and pulled up the basil from the tomato pots. We were able to bring our herb pots inside, but wanted to protect the spinach, chard and kale seedlings (we just replanted our boxes a few weeks ago). On our porch was an egg crate mattress topper I had posted on Freecycle. The guy had missed 3 pick-up times and Dan and I looked at each other and knew that it would provide awesome insulation. Dan cut it in half and we covered the 2 larger boxes with the pieces, strapping it to the boxes with our canoe straps (my, aren't we handy?) A recycling bin went over another box and a fleece blanket over another.

But the tomatoes--we have like 8 or 10 tomato and tomatillo plants in pots and there was no way we were covering them, let alone hauling them in the house at their present height. Super pysched that the frost skipped our town last night, thanks frost!

This Week's CSA Pick-Up

2008-09-09T18:11:00.000-07:00

I've been writing Facebook notes about my CSA and decided to do something a little more formal. Here it goes!

this week's pickup was stellar again. i scored:
a bunch of cilantro
2 pounds of heirloom tomatoes--i got some that look like the red version of green zebra plus some larger red ones
1/3 pound salad greens
3/4# tomatillos
a rutabaga (!)
2 pounds potatoes
a cantaloupe
2 summer squash
6 ears of corn
a head of cauliflower
a green pepper
3 amazing red Italian frying peppers
1 cuke

those frying peppers were incredible. i actually kept the seeds to try saving them for next year. they look similar to cubanelles but are intensely sweet. i used them tonight--i caramelized an onion from last week's pickup, adding the red pepper at the end along with a slivered huge clove of garlic i picked up at the farmer's market. i made a pizza on the grill, which i think i've not mastered to my liking (see more below) with sliced tomatoes, grilled chicken sausage, the sauteed peppers/onion and some fresh local mozzarella. we also had a salad with a cuke and more tomatoes.

the corn has been stellar--i actually had some friends over last weekend for dinner and had some of the csa corn and some other corn from a farm near work and kate traded her farm-near-work ear for a csa-ear! and we've been getting 6 ears a week for several weeks--we've been really lucky.

so my new pizza technique: i've been making the Easy Whole-Wheat Pizza Dough, which is SO EASY to roll out. I use half the dough for a pizza. I grill one side directly on the grate, then flip and top. I've been cooking the heck out of it on the second side, which makes it really nice and crispy and mottled. DELICIOUS!